Murdered teen girl ‘smothered and dumped handcuffed in a river by maniac who’d previously been charged with sexually assaulting her at gunpoint
A MAN has been charged with the violent murder of a teenager he sexually assaulted at gunpoint a year earlier.
Kristen Stone’s naked body was found decomposed in the Cape Fear River in North Carolina in August 2017.
Charles Cottingham, an air force veteran, was arrested weeks later and charged with first-degree murder.
The 33-year-old had previously been charged with sexually assaulting 19-year-old Stone in 2016.
According to the Fayetteville Observer, Stone met Cottingham through a sex advert in Hoke County.
It is alleged that the victim had been offering sex in exchange for money on a website called ‘Backpage’.
Investigators say that when the pair first met, Cottingham held a gun to Stone’s head as he forced her to perform a sex act on him in a parked car.
Police stumbled across the incident during a routine patrol, and Cottingham was charged with a first-degree sexual offence, as well as kidnapping and solicitation.
He was also placed under a nightly curfew and a restraining order was put in place to keep him away from Stone.
Months later, the teenager’s parents reported her missing, and her body was found tangled in trees in the river the following day.
Investigators going through her phone discovered she had placed another advert offering escort services
CCTV footage showed the teenager leaving a motel and getting into a 2010 Nissan Maxima – the same model of car driven by Cottingham.
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The suspect has been in jail since the arrest in September and is due to appear at the Cumberland County District Court on March 27.
A post-mortem to establish the exact cause of Stone’s death remains inconclusive.
According to the pathologist, her death was violent and could have been the result of smothering, suffocation or drowning.
The medical examiner’s opinion considered the fact that Stone was found naked in the river with a zip tie around her left wrist and was last seen alive with Cottingham.
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